Pap
late Middle English: probably from Middle Low German, Middle Dutch pappe, probably based on Latin pappare ‘eat’.
wiktionary
Origins unclear. Related to Middle Low German pappe, Dutch pap, German Pappe(“pap, porridge; wheatpaste; cardboard”), Old French papa/ pape, Latin pappa, Bulgarian папам(papam, “to eat”) and Serbo-Croatian папати/ papati(“to eat”), among others. The relationships between these words are difficult to reconstruct. The Germanic word is either a borrowing from Latin or, perhaps more probably, an independent formation in baby-talk.
From Middle English pappe, of uncertain origin. Perhaps from Latin papilla; or perhaps compare Old Swedish papp(“breast, nipple”), from Proto-Germanic *pap-(“nipple”), of imitative origin, or from Proto-Indo-European *pap-(“pock mark, nipple”); Swedish dialectal papp, pappe, Swedish patt, Danish patte, North Frisian pap, pape, papke(“breast, pap”).
Shortened form of Pap smear from Georgios Papanikolaou, American physician.
From Afrikaans pap(“porridge”). [1] Cognate with etymology 1.
Clipping of paparazzo.
Compare pa, papa, pop.
pap (third-person singular simple present paps, present participle papping, simple past and past participle papped)
etymonline
pap (n.1)
"soft food for infants, gruel, porridge," late 14c., from Old French pape "watered gruel" and Medieval Latin papo, both from Latin pappa, a widespread word in children's language for "food" (compare Middle High German and Dutch pap, German Pappe, Spanish, Portuguese papa, Italian pappa), imitative of an infant's noise when hungry; possibly associated with pap (n.2). Meaning "over-simplified idea" first recorded 1540s.
pap (n.2)
"nipple of a woman's breast," late 12c., pappe, first attested in Northern and Midlands writing, probably from a Scandinavian source (not recorded in Old Norse, but compare dialectal Swedish pappe), from PIE imitative root *pap- "to swell" (source also of Latin papilla "nipple," which might rather be the source of the English word, papula "a swelling, pimple;" Lithuanian papas "nipple"). Like pap (n.1) supposed to be ultimately of infantile origin.
pap (n.3)
"father," also "older man," 1844, American English shortening of papa.
